Colin is one of the founding directors
of Contract Diving Services. He spent seven and a half years
in the Royal Australian Navy, joining at 15 years of age to
become an electrical mechanic on gunnery systems, multi generator
switchboards and distribution systems.
Later he changed over to become a naval clearance
diver assigned to various ships and operational diving teams
throughout the South Pacific region. After his honourable discharge,
he immediately commenced work in the offshore diving industry
involved in oil and gas exploration, and construction diving
operations.
Colin has been involved with many construction projects over
the last 20 years. He was mainly involved in Western Australian
development projects as detailed below. Colin is well known
and respected in the industry, at all levels of the workforce,
for his project management and supervision skills.
Contract Diving Services (CDS)
was, until its sale in June 1997 to American Oilfield Divers
Inc., the largest privately owned underwater intervention company
in Australia. It was founded in 1978 to supply the need for
a more cost efficient approach to underwater construction and
engineering. Based in Perth, the majority of the company's initial
projects were in the north-west of Western Australia.
However, in the two decades under the leadership of Colin
“Spud” Murphy and Anthony
“Dusty” Miller, CDS became the most active diving
company in Australia, both offshore and onshore. Operations
were undertaken Australia wide, including Bass Strait and the
Timor Sea.
The company undertook work which included:
• All
facets of commercial diving including nitrox, deep air, and
saturation diving.
• The
manning of saturation diving support vessels for construction
and inspection related services.
• The
provision of highly trained personnel for specialist activities
such as non-
destructive testing and inspection of
subsurface and surface structures, with similar capabilities
in geotechnical investigation.
• Robotics
operations of two Work Class ROV’s and medium work class
ROV's.
• The
operation of two Atmospheric
Diving System (ADS) “Newtsuits” complete with
Launch and Recovery Systems. With the
addition of state-of-the-art technology, under the
management of “Spud” and “Dusty”, CDS
was able to provide manned or unmanned
operations to depths of 300m (1000ft).
• The
organisation of a consortium which oversaw the design, construction,
commissioning and acquisition for the
RAN, in conjunction with the Australian
Submarine
Corporation (ASC) of an entirely new air-portable, offshore-capable
system of submarine rescue, utilising
a remotely operated rescue vehicle (RORV) known
as Remora
(see also InDepth
Project Management for more information
on Remora). Both Spud and Dusty were personally involved in
the operational trials of Remora and the
selection of the original team of pilots, technicians and
managers.
Contract Diving Services’ head office supported all field
operations by supplying management, administration and communications.
Since the sale of CDS to American Oilfield Divers (name changed
to Ceanic Corporation) the company has again been resold to
Stolt
Offshore, one of the worlds leading subsea intervention
companies. Both Spud and Dusty retired from Ceanic in 1998.
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